Syncapse Corp. is one of those cutting-edge start-ups launched by a 20-something entrepreneur who secured top-notch clients and global office locations in a couple of years. The Toronto, Ont.-based social technology company is now on the search for equally brilliant individuals to join its teams in Toronto, New York, Portland and London.
“We are trying to hire 60 people in this market between now and the end of October,” said Michael Scissons, president and CEO of Syncapse. The company currently has 115 employees across all four offices.
Canadian openings range from developers to project managers to product managers to digital analysts. The New York office is looking for sales; Portland is hiring Java developers; and the U.K. needs people in the digital studio, accounts, project management and sales.
But “our hiring plans are never constrained to specific job descriptions,” said Scissons. “We are always looking for really bright people who want to do something different, who want to create change and be a part of something.”
Scissons, a 26-year-old from Saskatchewan, takes an out-of-the-box approach to hiring. The first principal is “there doesn’t have to be a description to get a job here,” he said.
Creating a “great office culture” for the teams is important to Syncapse. “We are investing a lot of time and money into focusing on culture,” said Scissons.
“Everything has been thought through because we ultimately want to have a very positive employee experience and want people to feel they are a part of something and everyone is treated in a very equal and fair manner,” he said.
The downtown Toronto location hosts the office dog, fridges stocked with Red Bull and office parties with drinks in the boardroom every other week. A minimum of four weeks vacation is provided to all employees.
“We have people tasked with managing and building our culture as an organization, from everyone getting a Macbook to the 25-inch displays to the Herman Millar chairs,” said Scissons.
Syncapse is a start-up with a rapid-paced environment, said Scissons. “Everything happens very quickly, but it is a very open, fun and interesting culture,” he said.
“Most of the people who come here have come here because they want to do something different and they want to be a part of something. They want to join a culture where they are important and what they do does matter and they aren’t a massive cog in the wheel,” he said.
Finding top talent is becoming more and more difficult, said Scissons. “We are ultimately in a state similar to a lot of other companies – where you build talent through acquisitions,” he said.
Syncapse acquired Portland, Ore.-based Swift Notion Software LLC, which specializes in Jive Software’s SBS and Clearspace social software platforms, in late February this year. All Swift Notion staff were retained as part of the Syncapse team, states a company press release.
“As all of these fragmented platforms become more and more important to our customers … making sure that we have the top talent that understands these systems better than anybody else becomes really high on our priority list,” said Scissons.
Talent from Swift Notion will help Syncapse “evolve our knowledge into Jive so much faster,” he said. “These are guys who were originally on the platform team who understand the system inside out.”
Syncapse is a full-service social technology provider with enterprise-level professional services and SaaS-based solutions that aim to help businesses manage multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
The business is broken down into two key areas, but the services and solutions are “deeply interconnected” in terms of being able to offer clients a holistic solution, said Scissons.
SocialTALK, the company’s proprietary social media management platform, serves the specific needs of medium and large businesses “who have a very specific challenge of managing this monstrosity that social media is creating,” said Scissons.
A major brand might have 40 Facebook pages, three YouTube channels, five Twitter channels, three Google Buzz pages and two MySpace pages, he said.
“It’s not going to end. The fragmentation is getting so large and so diverse with all the international markets, people and places … we wanted to build a system that would simplify that,” he said.